Preview: Five Pieces From The Walt Disney Family Museum’s Upcoming “Snow White” Exhibit

The Walt Disney Family Museum announced yesterday their first major special exhibition, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Creation of a Classic.” The show is tied into the film’s 75th anniversary this year, and will be on view from November 15, 2012 through April 14, 2013 at the San Francisco-based museum.

I saw a preview of the exhibition yesterday afternoon and it will be a must-see for any Cartoon Brew reader. The more than 200 pieces of art on display will include conceptual drawings, early character studies, detailed story sketches, and animation drawings, as well as thumbnail layout watercolors, pencil layouts, watercolor backgrounds, cels, and vintage posters.

The show will be organized by sequence through the progression of the film, featuring plenty of never-before-seen artwork and behind-the-scenes stories about the film’s production. Artwork from deleted sequences like the Dwarfs’ Bed Buildng Scene and Snow White-dancing-in-the-stars fantasy segment will also be represented. The exhibition is curated by Lella Smith, the Creative Director of the Walt Disney Animation Research Library, and will be accompanied by an exhibition catalog written by J. B. Kaufman. (We’ve plugged the catalog earlier on Cartoon Brew.

I’m with you. Tenggren is clearly of that same “school” as Arthur Rackham and Willy Pogany, but he gives his characters such emotion in their expressions and such drama in their poses that I don’t think there will ever be anyone like him again.

Just look at Snow White’s fingers there. Anyone else would have simply posed her hands as clutching. But not Tenggren. It’s as if her right hand is ready to take the apple, but her left hand is holding it back. There’s just so much going on there.